Hina the Moon
by TygerSong
Summary: When the moon disappears and threatens the people of Motunui, Moana and Maui are of course the ones tasked with going to bring it back, with the help a rather confused stranger. Moana is torn between balancing the responsibilities to her people and her destiny, Maui worries that maybe he's gone a little soft, and Tanni is tired of being kidnapped and mistaken for some Hina person.


Chapter One:

The moon was gone. One night it was there, half visible in the night sky, the rest of it's form hidden in shadow, and the next it was nowhere to be seen. It was not a new moon, because even then it's outline could be made out against the black and blue sky. It was simply… gone.

The first one to notice was a young child no more than six years of age. She had tugged on the skirt of her mother and asked, "Where is the moon?" A few others overheard her and looked to the sky as well.

"It's not out yet," her mother had soothed. "It will be back later in the night." But it didn't return. At first, no one thought much of it. The moon sometimes stayed hidden, but it always returned.

It didn't this time.

The missing orb in the sky wasn't the only change though. The sea was not as wild or alive as it usually was. It was tame, the waves barely moving the surface. Without the tide, there was nothing to help their boats move over or around the rocks surrounding their reef and their island. Fish were showing up already dead in their baskets, or floating belly up in the shallow water. The weather changed so abruptly and so dramatically, moving from still and sunny to windy and frigid, that it was killing off some of the less resilient of the plant life on the island, including many of the coconut trees. The most shock came when it started snowing, and stopped again only minutes later.

The biggest change of all though, came when the ocean finally did show signs of moving- massive, damaging, life threatening signs of moving. In other words, there was a single colossal wave, a tsunami, reaching up as high as a mountain and stretching outward as far as the eye could see, moving at alarming speeds straight towards their island. Many people tried to run for higher ground, but it would all be in vain. No one could make it to the top within the next minute. Others tried climbing the tallest trees within their immediate vicinity, but this would not matter in the end, as the wave would crash into them all the same. All the young chief of the island could do was watch their approaching doom, and pray that someway, somehow, her people would be spared.

Her prayers were answered in the form of a giant hawk speeding towards them, faster than even the tsunami was moving, and landed on the beach as a rather large man covered in impressive tattoos, each of which told a story. He turned to confront the wave just as it reached the reef, held out his giant magical fishhook, and shouted his familiar battle cry.

 _"_ _Cheeeee Hoooooo!"_

The waters parted, straight down the middle, and rushed around the island rather than through it. The people nearest to see their savior cheered, cried, and in some cases, fainted. Once the water passed, Maui, the island's patron demigod, let the end of his hook drop and he allowed himself to relax for the first time in a little over forty-nine hours.

"Maui!" He looked over his shoulder and saw his favorite curly-haired mortal rushing towards him.

"Hey, Mo," he said nonchalantly, leaning against his hook in an attempt to look at least a little less exhausted than he actually was. He still needed to keep looking strong for appearance's sake at least.

"Maui, how did you know to come rescue us?" Moana, the chiefs new young chief, asked.

"Princess, this is the eleventh island I've saved today," he admitted truthfully. "I've known about the wave longer than you have."

"Why is this happening?" she asked, and Maui took in the bags under her eyes, and the slouch in her shoulders. She was as tired as he was. "The weather has been back and forth all day, the trees are dying, the _fish_ are dying, and not even the ocean is acting like it usually does."

He considered trying to soften the blow; tell her a white lie to put her at ease and soothe the anxious, gathering crowd. But he knew it wouldn't do any good in the long run. They needed to know, and they needed to be aware if they were going to make it through.

"Someone stole the moon."

* * *

The first thing she noticed as consciousness slowly slipped into place, was the overpowering smell of seaweed and fish. The second thing she registered, was the sound of moving water, rushing and retreating, back and forth. _Shhhhhh... Shhhhhhh..._ Like a mother comforting a young child.

The third thing she recognized, was the feeling of thousands of little grains of sand, in her hair, in her clothes, and in her mouth.

She lay there for a moment, trying to remember where she was- and was alarmed when she couldn't recall. She had absolutely no reason to be on a beach. In fact, the last thing she could remember was being in Atlanta, Georgia. There were no sea shores in Atlanta, Georgia.

She finally opened her eyes, and had to blink to bring her vision into focus, and a splitting headache drilled into her brain from behind her eyes. She groaned, and sat up slowly, spitting out sand and brushing it from her hair and face. There was something sharp poking her thigh, and when she looked around, she realized that she was in a small cave with the entrance leading to a small sandbank and then a vast open ocean. Surrounding her on the sandy cave floor (and poking uncomfortably into her thigh), were twigs, fish bones and… were those owl pellets?

 _Definitely_ not Atlanta, Georgia.

Having registered that she was very much lost, she looked down at herself, and was surprised to see she was wearing one of her performance outfits. She remembered packing it into a suitcase back home in Ohio, but she didn't remember putting it on…

She really shouldn't have if she was planning on going to the ocean. The outfit was wrinkled enough to make her mother squeak in the same way she did every time her daughter brought home another stray, or got dirt under her fingernails. The sleeves of her leggings were pushed up to her mid calves, and one of them had a hole in the knee. Her teal dress was worse for wear, but not damaged. Her necklace was in place, as was the jeweled belt with the dangling owl around her waist. Her shoes though, were nowhere to be found, but that was not her biggest issue. Her initial worry that she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted seemed to be less of a concern, and she still felt the same, if not a little sunburned.

The problem was the evident gap in her memory, the unfamiliar surroundings, and the general lack of anything alive as far as she could see.

"So nice of you to finally rejoin us, Hina," a low, lilting voice said. The young woman looked around wildly, not having seen anyone else in the cave. An amused laugh reverberated throughout the cave. "I'm up here, dearest."

She looked up, and wondered how on earth she had managed to miss the enormous arrangement of twigs and tree branches, nestled in the higher reaches of the cave. It was easily large enough to hold four grown men, and still have elbow room. Perched on the side, was a hunched figure, but she could not make out what they looked like. She could only see a pair of glowing yellow eyes peering back at her gleefully.

"I was starting to think you'd never come back," he said. "Thought maybe you were enjoying your time in the far future a little too much. But you had to come back, didn't you? By the way, you wouldn't by chance happen to remember your native language, would you? English is such a drab language to speak in."

He waited for her to respond, but she really couldn't understand what he was referring to. He was acting like he knew her, but she was sure she had never met this man in her life. He also seemed to think that she was supposed to know a language other than English. She had taken a couple of years of Spanish back in high school, but that was not her "native language."

When she didn't answer, she saw the yellow eyes narrow, and a flicker of irritation passed through them. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Cat got your tongue?"

' _It's not my tongue that's the problem,'_ the woman thought, but she stayed silent.

"You know," the man said, sounding significantly more vexed. "I know we didn't leave off on the best of terms, but it's still considered rude to ignore a direct question." The woman's fingers twitched at her sides, and she considered trying to answer him in her own way, but before she could come to a decision, the man growled in irritation, hunched forward slightly, and two big triangular limbs flared to his sides. He fell forward and glided silently on wings protruding from his back, landing before her. She could see him clearly now. She could see that he was actually not a man at all. He wasn't even remotely human. He was a huge owl, standing a foot and a half taller than herself, making him almost seven feet tall.

She was sitting in front of seven feet of feathers, muscles, and talons- one of which reach forward and grabbed her by her throat. He pulled her up to standing and she flailed, trying to fight off the hold. He wasn't choking her, but she didn't like anything touching her throat- not ever in the last eight years has she allowed anyone or anything touch her throat. Not even a turtleneck sweater or a choker necklace, and certainly not a giant talking owl with razor sharp talons.

He didn't let go though, didn't even seem to care that she had gone from unmoving to thrashing about. He only held her by her chin and tilted it up and to the side. It was then that the owl could see the thin white scar trailing down the length of her larynx.

"Hmm," he hummed to himself. "Looks like you're damaged goods now. At least you can no longer wield your words like weapons when you have no voice." He let her go and she fell back onto a pile of bones much too big to be a fish. "You'll have to excuse the mess, dearest," he said, wandering lazily towards the mouth of the cave. "I wasn't expecting company, and time spent cleaning is such a waste when I'll just make another mess later. Do feel free to clean it up yourself, though."

He paused at the water's edge, and twisted his head a full 180૦ to look at the young woman who was staring in horror at the human skull she had tripped on. "You will do me that favor, won't you? It's the least you could do after avoiding me for all these centuries." As expected, she didn't respond. "I'll be back shortly with our wedding meal. Do wait up." The woman started, and her attention and terror switch from the skeleton to the words he had just spoken.

' _Wedding meal?'_ Before she could try to find a way to ask him though, he took off into the bright blue sky, and she was left alone, sitting in a pile of bones, without any answers to her unasked questions, in the home of a giant owl that had apparently kidnapped her with the intent of marrying her. She would have called it a nightmare, but she was pretty sure that even her wild imagination couldn't come up with something this wild. Somehow, this was reality, and she needed an escape plan.

 **Hello there! So usually, when I write fan fiction for a movie, I don't dare even start writing until I own the movie, but when I saw Moana in theaters two weeks ago, I could not help myself. Already as I was walking out of the theaters, a story was plotting itself in my head, and a new character started piecing itself together. I wanted her to be from the future (our modern day) with a language barrier, and then I was like, well why not two language barriers? It's not like Moana knows English** ** _or_** **American sign language. I also wanted her appearance to have something to do with the moon, and maybe something to do with Maui... So, I wrote down what I had in my head, then went and did a bit of research on Hawaiian mythology and history if I do(really interesting by the way; I definitely suggest doing a bit of research yourself) and what I found was almost too perfect. I can't tell you what it was now because I might ruin the rest of the story (or maybe if you've already picked it up if you have studied up on Hawaiian mythology), but I just got so excited, and I had to come here and write this.**

 **Updates for this story might be slow, because I am a busy person outside of fan fiction, I have about of dozen of writing projects going on, including this one, and (as stated above) I prefer having a movie within my grasp to be watched over and over again to study the story line, time period, character development, and facial expressions (you can learn a lot about a character simply from watching their face, and it is one of my favorite things about animated movies). I will probably also go back and change things if I feel like they are too cliche, Mary-Sue, or OOC (my three worst fears in writing.) If you read this story and find that anything really is cliche, Mary-Sue, or OOC, please let me know, and I might change things around a bit to fix that. Seriously, I don't get offended by constructive criticism, even if I don't always agree with it. I do hope you'll bare with me though, and enjoy the story. :)**

 **~TygerSong**


End file.
